Amnesty International

Implicit in your assertion that Amnesty International's efficacy as an organization has been damaged is a commonly held belief that there is a hierarchy of rights, with enforcement of civil and political rights prioritized over social and economic rights. That a right is violated en masse does not alone make it less justiciable. Indeed, Amnesty's decision to attack the causes of widespread rights violations is arguably more efficient than its earlier fly-swatter approach of individually-based actions, although this has its uses as well.

Moreover, while you attribute a decrease in visible prisoners of conscience to the collapse of the Soviet empire and apartheid in South Africa, it is far more likely the result of organizations like Amnesty International making it much more costly for a state to do so. What might be better attributed to the collapse of these regimes is this very willingness of human rights organizations to tackle social and economic rights violations without the same fear of the ideologically-based repercussions that were characteristic of the Cold War.

However, if social and economic rights have become less politicized, civil and political rights face a very serious threat in the so-called "war on terror," which is why Amnesty rightly focuses on violations committed in this context. Once a champion of human rights, at least in rhetoric,the United States has justified its rights violations not as aberrations but as necessary national security policies, and in the process has greatly undermined international human rights law.